500 



A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



Court in London. The Attorney-General, Mr. Edwin James, O.C., Mr. Welsby, 

 Mr. Bodkin, and Mr. Huddleston were for the prosecution. The florid and 

 portly prisoner, defended by Mr. Serjeant Shee, Mr. Grove, O.C., Mr. Gray, 

 and Mr. Kenealy, kept perfectly cool throughout, sending slips of paper every 

 now and then to his solicitor and counsel for their instruction. But Sir Alexander 

 Cockburn's reply was fatal. " It was the riding that did it," remarked the prisoner, 

 calmly, as he left the dock for the scaffold, tripping on his toes with rather a cat- 

 like gait, and moving his body and head from side to side as if in search 

 of approbation. 



The Turf is not all sunshine, and my sketch of it would be incomplete were 



there not some shadows 

 to throw up the light. 

 The tale of Palmer must 

 not be taken, fortunately, 

 as typical of many others. 

 But it is suggestive of 

 the terrible results that 

 may ensue when the 

 wrong man takes up 

 racing, becomes reckless, 

 and finally leaves so 

 deep a stain upon the 

 noble sport he has dis- 

 honoured that unthink- 

 ing faddists attribute to 



the Turf itself the whole of his rascality. This, however, is in fact the result 

 of an ingrained scoundrelism that would have blackened just as foully every sphere 

 of life with which it might have come in contact. 



When John Osborne first met Palmer, he thought him " a nice sort of fellow 

 to speak to." The Rugeley surgeon was running Doubt in a handicap which old 

 John won with Alp. This was one of his first horses, and his Turf career 

 commenced successfully enough. Very few people suspected what the end would 

 be. As a boy of twelve he inherited ,7,000, as his part of the fortune which his 

 father had accumulated as a timber merchant ; and he first learnt the use of 

 strychnine as a student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, whence he passed into a 



" Blink Bonny" by " Melbourne" (1854). 



